Bright lights in the Texas legislature

The Texas legislature is generally the butt of jokes, and it’s not hard to see why: it’s an awesome body of distilled stupidity. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good ones among the chaff, and State Senator Rodney Ellis and State Representative Patrick Rose should be counted among them. They’ve written an excellent op-ed for the Houston Chronicle in which they point out the contradiction of a state that wants to build a leading-edge set of scientific research institutions with a State Board of Education led by a mob of incompetent creationist cretins. They’ve put together some legislation to hold the SBOE accountable for their performance — a marvelous turnabout of the No Child Left Behind philosophy of policing schools on their performance. Let’s see the rascals who want to put together bogus curricula scrutinized on the basis of long-term performance in science by the kids!

Here’s something you can do right now. Thank these two smart politicians by signing a letter. It’s the least you can do. And if you’re a Texan in their districts, vote for them!

She really shouldn’t be sober right now

ERV is apparently attending a talk by John West and Casey Luskin right now. Would you believe that West actually cited the New Scientist “Darwin was wrong” cover? That’s going to have to be one of the new hallmarks of creationist idiocy: West couldn’t have read anything between the covers.

We’ll have to tune in later to find out what else they talked about. I predict West will have accused “Darwinists” of being behind Hitler, and Luskin will have complained about the viciousness of proponents of evolution.

Be sure to check the updates to ERV’s posts above — I called it perfectly. In the case of Luskin, even more perfectly than perfect. Luskin actually accused ERV specifically of being something like a meanie-pants poopie-head.

Faith of plagiarism

The other day, I briefly mentioned this ridiculous “Faith of Britain” site that was full of woo-woo nonsense. Well, unsurprisingly, it turns out they’re also cheap and unoriginal. Alongside a section that says this:

Faith of Britain Day will help us all overcome whatever obstacles and difficulties we may face as a country, an economy and as individuals. With over 80 million people concentrating their mental energies at the same time on the same day, we will unleash an irresistible psychic force that will, quite literally, make our dreams come true.

Faith of Britain recognizes that Britain is a multi-cultural, multi-faith family. All of our faiths and beliefs have one common thread: the belief that positive thinking makes positive things happen.

They have a little photo montage of various diverse people. I’ve gotten several emails today from people who say, “Hey! I recognize those guys!” — it seems they aren’t British, and they aren’t particularly into New Age quantum weeblishness. The picture is lifted straight out of the web page for the Department of Astronomy at the University of Florida. I wonder if they know that their mental energies are being harnessed to psychically fix the British economy?

Spanking New Scientist

If you open your latest issue of New Scientist (unless, of course, you threw away your subscription), you’ll find a nice little letter from three luminaries — Dennett, Coyne, and Dawkins — and one other guy explaining that Darwin was actually mostly right, contrary to a certain recent cover. Here’s a taste:

What on earth were you thinking when you produced a garish cover proclaiming that “Darwin was wrong” (24 January)?

First, it’s false, and second, it’s inflammatory. And, as you surely know, many readers will interpret the cover not as being about Darwin, the historical figure, but about evolution.

Nothing in the article showed that the concept of the tree of life is unsound; only that it is more complicated than was realised before the advent of molecular genetics. It is still true that all of life arose from “a few forms or… one”, as Darwin concluded in The Origin of Species. It is still true that it diversified by descent with modification via natural selection and other factors.

The flagellation continues.

Creedocide

I wish I were a Republican, so I could just make stuff up

Carl Zimmer is a little bit peeved at the ever flexible standards of the media. If you’re a science writer like he is, your articles get fact-checked until they bleed. If you’re George Will, conservative pedant and pundit, not so much. The Washington Post seems to basically accept whatever he says as gospel truth, even when he gets the scientific facts completely wrong.

Oh, for the day when our media wake up to the fact that they are supposed to be reality-based, not faith-based.

Ray Comfort has a new book

I don’t recommend reading Comfort’s book, but I can whole-heartedly recommend the reviews of You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can’t Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics as worthy and entertaining. As you might guess, they aren’t kind.

The best review, though, gives the book five stars. But then, what else would you expect from General JC Christian, Patriot?

Quote of the day

This is a real letter from Muskegon, Michigan.

On the Feb. 8 “60 Minutes” program, we were captivated while viewing the Katie Couric interview of the crew and passengers of Flight 1549.

However, we were struck there was not one mention of God, who directs pilots of planes and secures the safety of passengers.

We have written CBS and asked them for more realistic programming. Help protect our freedoms. Write CBS about this.

It was fine right up through “not one mention of God”, then swoooosh, it plummets off the cliff of insanity into the sucking sludge-pit of unreality. God keeps planes safe? More god = realistic programming? Fawning over a deity protects our freedoms? Nuts.

One reassuring note, though, is that most of the comments on the letter are scathing. Not everyone in Muskegon is quite so wacky, apparently.